The present article looks at national development and China's international positioning. Our goal is to discuss how the formation of a continental economy in China has become a factor of that country's projection within the international system, analyzing how the formation of a continental economy produces a sort of gravitational effect that favors the formulation of a Chinese international strategy within this conjuncture of systemic transition. We discuss several recurrent analyses of the China's development and international position. Our central arguments is that the development of a continental economy and the widening economic capacity that has accompanied it have become a key instrument of Chinese foreign policy. In other words, China tends to have a strong gravitational effect at the global level which it uses as part of its international strategy. We organize the text in the following manner: first, we discuss the recent evolution of Chinese development, focusing on the challenges of forming an economy of continental dimension; second, we look at how growing Chinese economic abilities imply an increasing gravitational effect on the country at a global level and finally, we argue that Chinese diplomacy uses these prerogatives (economic capacity) to unleash an international strategy that, within this situation of systemic transition, allows the country to widen the scope of its international performance by searching for the routes of lesser resistance.
China; Continental Economy; Gravitational Effects
